


On Fallout: New Vegas

by hambor12



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 10:29:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12319212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hambor12/pseuds/hambor12
Summary: An essay I wrote for the Common App that ended up being too long. i would've posted it on my tumblr but I don't use it anymore, and it would be weird on twitter. so here it goes.





	On Fallout: New Vegas

To many people, a shared experience is that of their favorite book, one that has shaped their life in some way after reading it in their formative years. As much reading as I currently do, I was not as melded by books like  _ The Hunger Games _ or even  _ Harry Potter _ , the pop culture darling. What shaped me wasn’t a book but a video game. Released sometime in 2008, my time with Obsidian Entertainment’s masterpiece  _ Fallout: New Vegas _ was a crucial part of my middle school years, my most formative of years and served as a variety of things. For one, as most games of its genre, the open-world roleplaying game,  _ New Vegas _ provided an escape, a place where my actions had visible consequences and what I did theoretically meant something. The world of  _ New Vegas _ also helped my find friends in a time where my social skills, due to my then recently-diagnosed autism, were admittedly not the best. Finally, the experience of  _ Fallout  _ left me with both new ideas and strategies through both its writing and game design that have helped me through today. 

Like the way people immerse themselves within the worlds of Narnia, Middle Earth, or Hogwarts, in my younger years I buried myself within the world of the Mojave Wasteland, circa 2281 A.D. While certainly much less whimsical than the latter worlds, there was something fascinating about post-apocalyptic Las Vegas. Whether it be the periods of calm between fights where one just wanders the vast Mojave Desert, a genuinely good story not seen in both the game’s predecessor and successor, or the mainly dopamine-inducing but still interesting quests to complete,  _ New Vegas _ was indeed a great escape, especially during my middle school years. I’m going to be frank and say that the middle school era of my life was probably the worst. Riddled with depression and stress from school and family, my sole escape was in the Xbox 360. As a solo game, I was left up to my own devices, and what really helped me was how much I could do, and how much of those things affected the world of  _ Vegas _ . In a time when I was feeling helpless, without control over my life, I was able to control my own virtual life and become a hero of the wasteland, someone people like me would look up to. The game provided me with tasks I was able to do, unaffected by my own mental roadblocks, and eventually I was able to bring both the drive of completing quests and the control over my life into the present, as I gradually became more and more stable. Still, the experience of that escape is something I fondly remember as the best of a bad time.

_ Fallout: New Vegas _ , through both its game design and its story, has helped me shape both my values and my practical skills.  _ New Vegas _ is home to a variety of characters as simple as a cute mutated mole rat who serves solely as set dressing to the emotionally complex companions, whose well-written stories require a level of nuance even in-game to manage. Among these companions include a shell-shocked sniper, and a mutated grandma with a helicopter blade for a sword. The one that resonated with me the most is Veronica Santangelo. On the surface, she seems to be the standard issue spunky, go-getter girl ubiquitous in roleplaying games. But progressing through her own questline has both the player and Veronica come to a crossroads of belief, as the people who’ve raised Veronica since birth, an order of once-powerful technological warrior-scholars, adamantly continue to uphold a dogma that is slowly killing them, contradicting her well-meaning but ultimately heretical optimist ideas. Eventually one can choose if Veronica stays with her people, silent and watching them fade out, or leave her family and friends, but be free to figure out her place in life. Veronica’s quest really resonated me, as someone who felt similarly trapped between chasing my ideals or staying with what my family and friends wanted me to do. While in-game, the actions of Veronica’s family had my character convince her to leave, the thoughts regarding the subject were something I carried over to the real world, and eventually led to me gaining a higher understanding of the thought processes of my family. I chose to follow the advice of my peers, which in some paradoxical way helped me become more independent as a person. There were other revelations that occurred while playing through the companion quests, with the aforementioned grandma and her own quest dealing with the consequences of medicating at the expense of memory helping me come to terms with my own issues with medications, or the also aforementioned sniper helping me come to terms with learning not to blame myself for things out of my control. In a lesser game, the messages would have been trite or cheesy, if not all-around handled poorly.  _ New Vegas _ has a sense of nuance and complexity that affected me to this day, and I thank said nuance for that.

 

_ Fallout: New Vegas _ is very dear to my heart. As one of the first games I’ve played to completion, it’s been a good metaphorical companion through my darkest times. Though my experiences with the real world Mojave Desert were less than ideal, the virtual Mojave Wasteland of 2281 is like a second home to me. It’s tangibly changed me, mainly for the better, and for that I thank both the game and the fine men and women at Obsidian for creating a game that has changed my life, the same way books like Harry Potter have changed others.

 


End file.
